First Matthew sent me this tweet showing a thieving moggie and his haul of socks and underwear (check out the original tweet to enlarge the photos).
https://twitter.com/EmrgencyKittens/status/929434815182471168
This email exchange ensued:
Jerry: What a diligent cat!
Matthew: Why do they do it?
Jerry: You’re asking me to enter a cat’s brain?
Matthew: What better place to be? Apart from the fact you have to lick your butt.
Jerry: LOL! They LIKE to do that!
Matthew: How do you KNOW? They HAVE to do it, but do they LIKE it?
Jerry: As you surely know, Dr. Cobb, evolution makes us like what we have to do. Orgasms are the prime example; maternal behavior another. I am making an informed guess here.
Matthew: Hmm. I think a more parsimonious explanation is that they don’t like the smell so they have to lick their butts. They may not not like it, but like the outcome.
Jerry: I’m putting our conversation in a post. Now.
Matthew: Fine. I’m right!
Is he?
I’d say you were. The cat’s butt is up the other end from its nose so smell can’t be that much of an issue. But what do I know?
I don’t know who is right, but all the socks and undergarments in the photo look like they belonged to men. Why would a cat selectively pilfer male belongings? Suggests that staff fibbed a bit, cat only had access to male clothes, or cat preferred male over female goods.
Ummm. . . they also look like one person’s undergarments. Have you considered the possibility, suggested in the flyer, that the cat steals from the nearest neighbor, and that neighbor is a man who lives by himself???
No, I hadn’t. But that could be.
If the thieving is about the proximity to a male who perhaps leaves his clothes on the line too long or leaves his door open, maybe that is it.
Just means cat is as much of an opportunist as a compulsive garment-gatherer.
But that, constrained by enivonment & predisposition, could describe almost anyone in any circumstance. #Determinism.
I am just killing myself laughing at the cat butt!
From Fecal Products Amalgamated comes Cat Butt®, the new product from the company that brought you Poop Chute®!
FPA, a subsidiary of the M. Havisham Wigs & M. Olivier Nuclear Materials Conglomerate. “The finest wigs from the materials you least expect.”
Editor’s note: The conglomerate’s name contains two references to fictional works, and while the first should be immediately obvious, I wonder if anyone will guess the second. Hint: like this bit of fun, it’s a mystery!
This is what evolutionary biologists think about after retirement… hmm…
Matthew is not retired.
Cats also lick your face. So they lick their butts so you can guess which they licked first.
But why does Reza Aslan lick his own butt?
OH SNAP
Sub
I don’t know whose hypothesis is correct, but I have some ideas about how to test them. We’ll just need some money from NSF.
I’d say he is but, inasmuch as I can’t lick my own but, I can’t be sure.
Things in excrement :
Bacteria
Viruses
I propose they are at work as well.
A cat’s butt often itches if it’s not clean, so they therefore lick it clean. And Mama did it, so why not continue.
Explaining the natural world, one cat-butt-lick at a time!
I would argue we don’t always like what we have to do. Really needing to go to the loo for example, is all about the alleviation of discomfort.
Similarly, if you’re sick or injured, you have to rest up to recover, but you don’t have to like it.
Which is why I side with Matthew. It shouldn’t be too hard in principle to test: just stick a cat in an fMRI at the right moment, and see which parts of the brain light up. Of course, this faces the minor detail that it involves herding cats. 😉
Except that you can’t move while in an fmri to get the results, so licking your butt will be impossible.
well, THAT certainly was not a waste of time!
What exactly do you mean by that?
Where was the cat hiding his stash?
And here I thought they licked their but because they can reach it.
More seriously, cats lick their coats, birds pick their feathers, and monkeys pick their hairs, despite all the gross things in there. In the two latter cases it is believed they relieve itches and/or gets rid of parasites. E.g. cats have hook worms, from severe to asymptomatic infestations: http://www.petmd.com/cat/conditions/infectious-parasitic/c_ct_ancylostomiasis .
But I can’t spell “butt”.
Ah so why couldn’t any of the things cat takes into its mouth from its anus – bacteria, viruses, yeast – keep bad things like parasites from sickening the cat?
…. unless I am mistaken about the definition of “butt”..
What is it Like to be a Cat?
There are people who like to lick butts, although not their own (not physically possible, as far as I know).
Someone start a research project and ask them.
How many licks does it take to get to the center of it?
I’m in the middle of watching the movie, “The Man Who Knew Infinity”, and the main character, Srinivasa Ramanujan, a gifted Indian mathematician, is asked why he keeps working on complex theorems. He answers, “Because I have to.”
Sorry Jerry but I think Matthew’s got this one! They do it because they have to, not because they like it.
Don’t they do it because over time the cats (and their predecessors) who have cleaned themselves thusly (cannot bring myself to write “licked their own butts” – oops!) have gained some sort of reproductive advantage by so doing? As in avoiding disease, detection by predators, etc.?
Or was that assumed all along and it’s just a “do they enjoy the process” vs “do they enjoy the result” debate?
I think the question is “How did natural selection mold cat brains to produce this behavior? By making licking pleasant, or making not licking unpleasant?”
Why do any of us lick our own butts? We all have our reasons.
…Um…Right?
I think they like it once they start but they wouldn’t donitbif they didn’t feel discomfort. It’s like itching a mosquito bite. I don’t like itching per se but it feels good when I itch a mosquito bite.
Do it. Not whatever that word was.
What a cute cat. My tonkinese cat is very mischievous too, though she has never stolen garments from the neighbors.
Nice of the cat to lay them all out so neatly too.
This is so lovely: https://imgur.com/gallery/JR3MaqO
it looks like a post you might like!
Cats, unlike dogs do not tend to exhibit coprophagic tendencies. So it would seem that they don’t particularly enjoy the taste. I propose that they those that lived to evolve did so due to the fewer amount of resident potential pathogens that they were carrying around. But, (pun intended) I think that the main reason is that occasionally cats can get stool matted in the fur around their rectum that can lead to an obstructive condition that could be potentially life threatening in the wild. This is particularly true for slightly longer haired cats. The matted stool becomes almost petrified and if no the dealt with promptly can make be quite a problem.
Other long haired animals have this cleanliness problem, such as sheep. Watch sheep shearing. Cows and horses and, no doubt,other animals have this problem (including some humans). The factory farms causes cows, pigs and chickens to have such problems. Cats clean the way they do because they can. Other animals don’t have that option. Humans have come up with a variety of solutions for cleaning behinds such as sponges on sticks, corn cobs, catalogs, weeds, left hands, TP, etc. In some parts of the world, few such options are available so they try to cover the stench with perfume. I understand that’s quite the olfactory experience.
While “evolution makes us like what we have to do”, it is not so clear that cats MUST lick their butts or risk their species going extinct. Also, there are plenty of things that are good for us to do but we generally don’t like: exercise is a good example, changing a diaper is another. Mothers do many things that they don’t particularly like out of a sense of duty, a drive undoubtedly provided by evolution. As usual, things are complicated.
I don’t know about the cat. This makes me wonder in what species pleasure associated with reproduction first started happening.
I suspect it started with the first sexually reproducing species. To think otherwise is to consider rape. Of course, it is also possible it started with indifference or boredom. I hear that still happens.
Actually, a harder question to answer is whether there was a first sexually reproducing species. What lies between asexual and sexual reproduction?
Thanks so much. That makes sense. I think more specifically maybe what I was trying to ask was in what species was the pleasure portion first able to be measured. If it was in the first sexually reproducing species, was it less than it is now? Does the pleasure portion of reproduction keep increasing and increasing with each species? What determines that?
Yes, I’ve often wondered that also. I suspect that pleasure is always involved no matter the species. It is evolution’s way of making us do things that are beneficial to survival and reproduction. Instead the question becomes which species feel pleasure like we do, or how does each species experience pleasure? Now that’s a really hard question to answer.
Story I read once –
Pompous lecturer: So, humans, who have evolved as a general-purpose species, can do anything that the more specialised mammals can do, albeit not quite so skilfully. For example, is there anything a cat can do that a human cannot?
Sarcastic voice from back of class: Lick its arse!
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